Koninck's panoramic pictures represent the culmination of an approach to landscape that is found in Dutch drawings as early as about 1600, and in the imaginary panoramic landscapes of Rembrandt and Hercules Seghers. Rembrandt's influence is especially evident in this early work of about 1648, although the topography recalls Koninck's native Gelderland in the eastern part of the Netherlands.

John Walsh Jr. "New Dutch Paintings at The Metropolitan Museum." Apollo 99 (May 1974), pp. 344, 348–49 n. 18, colorpl. V, calls it the original after which the five other known versions were copied [see Notes].

This picture is not included in Horst Gerson's catalogue raisonné of the artist of 1936. Gerson does however catalogue four additional versions of the composition, none of which he accepts as being painted by Koninck himself. Gerson no. XII was formerly in the Crews collection, London, the S. Büchenau collection, Lübeck-Niendorf, and in 1967 was in the collection of Büchenau's daughter, Mrs. Margarete Zantop, Barcelona. No. XIIa was formerly in the collection of A. Charles Kiefer, Schloss Dreilinden, Lucerne. No. XIIb was formerly in the MMA (acc. no. 30.95.295), but was deaccessioned in 1943 and given to the Halloran Hospital, Staten Island, New York. Gerson lists no. XIIc as in the J. Perman collection, Stockholm, but a note in the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague, states that Perman denied ever owning such a picture.

Claus Virch [see Ref. 1970] lists a fifth version as probably a nineteenth-century copy, in the collection of F. B. Anthon, Beverly Hills, California in 1967.

One of these versions, then in the collection of Peter Delme, was engraved in 1744 by J. B. C. Chatelaine, as by Rembrandt.

The present picture is the only one of the versions that does not include two small figures of fishermen on the bank just in front of the sailboat.